The Michelangelo Effect: Art Improves the Performance in a Virtual Reality Task Developed for Upper Limb Neurorehabilitation

Abstract

The vision of an art masterpiece is associated with brain arousal by neural processes occurring quite spontaneously in the viewer. This aesthetic experience may even elicit a response in the motor areas of the observers. In the neurorehabilitation of patients with stroke, art observation has been used for reducing psychological disorders, and creative art therapy for enhancing physical functions and cognitive abilities. Here, we developed a virtual reality task which allows patients, by moving their hand on a virtual canvas, to have the illusion of painting some art masterpieces, such as The Creation of Adam of Michelangelo or The birth of Venus of Botticelli. Twenty healthy subjects (experiment 1) and four patients with stroke (experiment 2) performed this task and a control one in which they simply colored the virtual canvas. Results from User Satisfaction Evaluation Questionnaire and the NASA Task Load Index highlighted an appropriate level of usability. Moreover, despite the motor task was the same for art and control stimuli, the art condition was performed by healthy subjects with shorter trajectories (p = 0.001) and with a lower perception of physical demand (p = 0.049). In experiment 2, only the patients treated with artistic stimuli showed a reduction in the erroneous movements performed orthogonally to the canvas (p < 0.05). This finding reminds the so-called Mozart effect that improves the performance of subjects when they listen to classic music. Thus, we called this improvement in the performance when interacting with an artistic stimulus as Michelangelo effect.

Italian Version of the Pittsburgh Rehabilitation Participation Scale: Psychometric Analysis of Validity and Reliability

“…In this scenario, it is also fundamental for clinical staff to understand the needs and expectations of patients for increasing their motivation during therapy [ 27 ]. Properly developing motivating tasks, and also exploiting new technologies, may increase the participation of subjects, therefore reducing perceived fatigue during therapy [ 28 ]. Another crucial aspect is that the participation of patients to therapy could depend on their relationship with the therapist.…”

A Systematic Review of the Use of Art in Virtual Reality

“…The resulting gap in feeling connected to virtual art-making caused by this limitation has implications to introducing haptic feedback to virtual art therapy. Iosa et al (2021) tried to rectify the missing tactile information that comes with virtual environments by adding visual feedback of color and shadow to the virtual tool used in their VR program [33].…”

“…Iosa et al (2021) conducted two experiments, but the first was excluded due to the population used. In the second experiment, four (4) stroke patients with an average age of 60 ± 13 years performed four (4) sessions of virtually interacting with either an artmasterpiece or a piece of control art [33]. The virtual art system consisted of a 2D canvas covered in a white film.…”

“…The participants also reported high scores of usability for the virtual reality task, hinting at implications of future use for VR-based rehabilitation. Limitations include small sample size and differences in details of the art masterpieces used [33]. Some of the art masterpieces contained humans while others consisted of fluid nature scenes.…”

“…Some of the art masterpieces contained humans while others consisted of fluid nature scenes. Artistic subject matter used in art therapy needs to be further studied, as it seems to have made an impact in three of the five studies reviewed so far [31][32][33]. There are implications that if art therapy can be performed while the brain is monitored using an electroencephalogram (EEG), then certain details and aspects of artwork, such as landscapes versus people in motion, can be used to target specific areas of the brain for rehabilitation [33].…”